a story about two rose Bushes

I recently heard a story about two rose bushes and it goes something like this. There are two rose bushes sitting in the florist shop exactly the same, let’s call the rose bushes Whitney and Dolly. While they are sitting in the store they are absolutely beautiful and worthy in their own right. Whitney is purchased by a woman named Karen and Dolly is purchased by Karen’s neighbour Dave.

The neighbours plant the rose bushes at the same time and Whitney and Dolly begin to blossom. Karen is convinced she knows best but overwaters Whitney; she prunes her way too often and slowly stunts Whitneys ability to grow. Dave, on the other hand, is a landscaper and knows everything there is to know about rose bushes; Dolly is thriving. Whitney can see that Dolly is substantially better, she begins to compare herself and thinks, “Why don’t I look as beautiful as her? There must be something wrong with me.” Whitney doesn’t know that her environment isn’t set up for success.

Whitney and Dolly do not have the same outcome because they were not brought up in the same environments. Similar to humans, we cannot compare our journey with the journey of others. Some of us grew up with Karens and some of us grew up with Daves. Unlike rose bushes we have the ability to water our roots and nurture ourselves. We can parent ourselves the way we wished we were parented as children. We can thrive with the right amount of water and sunlight.

We shouldn’t compare ourselves to our neighbours. We shouldn’t compare ourselves to other people on the internet. We have no idea how they were brought up. We have no idea the kind of struggles people have gone through. We have no idea what kind of privileges they have had.

We should try to not blame our parents, likely they were doing the best they could with the information they had. Of course not all parents, some parents were absolute shit. Either way there is no reason to play the victim, you can grow from that experience. Even though you weren’t watered properly you are still worthy and deserving of a good life. Even though your environment wasn’t ideal you can nurture yourself and thrive like Dolly. The choice is always yours. You may be a product of your envirment but you can make daily choices to grow out of those less than ideal circumstances.